Wilco – Wilco (The Album)

Wilco (The Album)

When you think Wilco, you probably think solid, professional alt-country song-writing, lots of respect from the music press, and reviews in The Wire.  You probably don’t think: Theme Tune!

So, the first track on Wilco (The Album) is a very pleasant surprise – ‘Wilco the Song’.  It’s a band theme, in a long and very silly tradition from the Monkees to S-Express.  And it’s right up there with the best.  It starts off sounding like the Velvet Underground, as befits serious indie craftsmen, and then heads more in the direction of the Boo Radleys doing their summer pop thing.  It’s all about how great the band are, how they can make it all better, and much you need them:  “Are times feeling tough? /Are the roads you take rough?”/A sonic shoulder to cry on”.  And when they conclude “Wilco, I love you baby!” you think, “yes! I believe I do!”  It’s funny and very catchy.

How could any album live up to such a sparkling start?  Wilco (The Album) for the most part can’t deliver the same level of inventiveness or surprise.  In fact, there’s a lot of what amounts to MOR country rock, and it begins to grate pretty quickly.  Songs like ‘One Wing’ feature large doses of Rock Drums and Rock Guitar, alongside some fairly trying lyrics about how “One wing will never fly alone.”  Fleetwood Mac would have been very pleased with themselves if they’d written this.  The second half of The Album moves quickly into cruise control, with the co-ordinates set for the middle of the road.

However, there is one real high point, a song that’s headed straight for Wilco’s Best Of. ‘Bull Black Nova’ has the relentless mounting terror of ‘Poptones’.  It’s written in the first person, sung by someone who’s clearly just done something terrible.  He’s covered in what can only be blood, and so is the road, his car, the floors, the walls.  “This can’t be undone”, he repeats. The song conveys, with brutal simplicity, how the nightmare has only just begun.  It ends in a gathering storm of distorted guitar, and is clearly the album’s stand-out track.  A minor masterpiece.

Wilco are clearly capable of some exceptional song-writing, and Jeff Tweedy’s lyrics always intrigue even when they annoy.  But across the length of this album, they seem happy to stick to an FM radio template that could hardly be called essential listening.  Come on Jeff, shift it up a gear!